You wrote a review of Red Badge of Courage or Wuthering Heights three years ago? Clean it up, put in the HTML and node it. You're studying for a chemistry test and you just know you're going to forget this thing or that? Node it. Your PhD thesis on the corrosion of tin-foil at sub-zero temperatures when molded into hats worn by paranoid bob-sledders is 300 pages long. There must be something interesting in it.

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<TenMinJoe> I used to really hate writing essays and now I come here and do it for fun.

This is a great idea! By typing up your lecture notes, you get to review them, and another chance to assimilate them. You get to share the knowledge with everythingites. When someone says, "uh, can I borrow your lecture notes?", you can say "no need!" and give them the URL.

And, if someone reads them and notices something you've misunderstood or got wrong, you'll get a /msg or an additional writeup to put you right.

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Ok, I like the idea, but I have some questions that I think need to be addressed. I realize this is a psuedo discussion but I think we need to figure this out first in the interest of avoiding future problems. So here are the issues I have...

What do I own?

I don't know, I am not a copyright expert. For original assignments, does the university own the assignment? Are the problems in a textbook protected by a copyright? Is stating the problem in our own words fair use? What about my homework, if I do it for a class and turn it in, do I retain ownership of my work or does the university then own it? If they hand it back who owns it? I don't know these things, I am just trying to think of all the problems I can...

Let's say I node the solutions to all the problems I have in a class. What am I doing this for? Now, I like to have example problems to study from, but is giving away solutions really helping someone? I mean, for many topics many universities use the same book, so your homework can quite possibly be someone else's homework as well, and you could basically be doing their homework for them. While this is nice, are they really learning to solve problems by copying your work?

Whose solutions anyway?

In most of my courses, the instructors hand out solutions after the assignment. I would assume that is not my property to freely distribute without permission. So should I node my solutions, which may be incorrect? Can I reword the correct solutions legally?

How do I node it?

Most of my homework involves many symbols and formatting that can't be done in html or text easily. So how do I node it? E2 has not evolved to the point where I can attatch PDF's or anything to nodes. I can do the best I can with calculator syntax but that can be tedious to enter. I could do it in TeX, but even most of my peers have no clue what TeX is. I could do it in MathML, but no browsers support it yet and E2 doesn't allow MathML tags anyway. I could post the raw postscript for the document, but that would be rather large and unreadible. For an english paper this is not a problem, but for us engineering/math types this is a big obstacle.

How can I control it?

While I like sharing, and I do have one of my essays on here already, I don't like the idea of people potentially using my papers for their classes. Sure, I could put a statement up there saying that it cannot be reproduced without permission, but who is that really going to stop?

It probably has nothing to do with copyright laws and everything to do with amount of money they charge us per course as well as their own future online education moneymaking dreams. The point is that whether or not it is legal for me to post my notes from class, I still must follow the regulations of my university or risk expulsion.

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While the idea of noding homework is laudable, the idea that all homework can successfully be noded as is is less so.

Too often, the homework that is noded on E2 is dry, boring, and largely unreadable. Remember, you are writing for a wider audience here. Check Sensei's original piece right up there at the top: Clean it up, put in the HTML and node it.

How, then, can the humble homeworker turn that B+ grade piece of homework into an E2 node worthy of multiple chings and many upvotes?

Let me re-phrase that. It is easy to grasp a complicated idea when it is presented in three or four short sentences. And more difficult to grasp the idea when it is presented in a single, multi-clause sentence.

If you have access to a grammar check utility*, then look at the average sentence length. Try to get the sentences down to an average length of 15 or 20 words. More than that and it gets hard to read. Fewer than that and the text can be disjointed. Also, try to vary the length of your sentences.

*Microsoft Word has a useful readability checker which can tell you how many words per sentence and characters per word, as well as giving a readability score. This whole WU scores as 14.9 words per sentence, and 4.5 letters per word, giving a readability score of 7.6. That means a 13-year-old should be able to read and understand it. To access this utility, go to "spelling and grammar""options" and check the box which says "show readability statistics".

On a similar note, look at average word length. Short words are better than excessively long ones. A good target is an average of 5 to 6 letters per word.

Third is to use footnotes and other techniques* to sustain the pace and direction of your argument. While it is good to explain and define your terms, many of your readers will want to follow your argument to its conclusion first, only later going back to clarify any side issues they may have misunderstood.

*Alternatively, since we are in HTML, use a hyperlink to offer the reader an explanation without forcing them to read it in the main flow of the argument.

Fourth, try to eliminate unnecessary verbiage. Cut it to the bone. Hack away at the piece and remove all unnecessary duplication. I can almost guarantee to cut out 30 to 50 percent of any article which crosses my desk, without affecting the meaning. This editing always makes the piece easier to read and more entertaining.

All these points are the basics of good writing. In most academic courses, editing your text to follow these guidelines will improve your grades.

Go the extra mile

If you want to get good rep scores on E2, then you need to do a little more. Among the most important is to do a series of searches on E2 to find most of the existing nodes relevant to your subject. Often checking the two (1 and 2) check boxes near the search field is a good idea. There will usually be two or three items which look as though they may be the ideal title for your writeup. Check these out, and look at the softlinks at the bottom as well.

Once you have an idea of the quality, size and titles of all the nodes relevant to your topic, you can decide the ones to which you want to make hardlinks. Also, you can choose which of the existing nodes is the best place for your new addition. If, and only if, there is no suitable existing node, then you can create your own node, but follow the advice in the perfect node and pick titles carefully.

Finally, use pipe links and hard links where appropriate. I believe that most E2 writeups do better if they use more pipelinks than hard links. It's a personal point, but well worth remembering.